Disaster recovery planning (DRP) is of utmost importance in the computing world of today. Modern day businesses rely heavily on multiple computers and automated systems. When computer services in an organisation are rendered unusable, the entire business functioning gets disrupted. The primary aim of a business contingency plan is, therefore, to minimise such work disruption and ensure some form of orderly recovery. Apart from this, the DRP also aims at ensuring the functionality of the standby systems when the need arises, and works at minimising the risk caused by delays.

However, the ultimate aim of such planning is to provide a sense of security to the employees and entrepreneurs, for quite a few among them are adherers of Murphy's Law: ?Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.?

Disaster assumes many forms. It can either be a natural calamity that causes mass destruction or some other problem that plagues the computer system causing a loss of data.

9 out of 10 times occurrences of data loss can be pinned down to human error, or software and hardware-related problems. Virus is another causative factor, though not as significant as the other three factors cumulatively put together.

Any loss of data badly affects businesses, for downtime costs are high. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK could be wasting approximately ? 63.855 billion per annum as a result of downtime loss. 4 out of 10 companies (that have been part of the survey) stated that absence of data for more than 3 days jeopardises their business survival. Every company has to realise the importance of a DRP and formulate one, for half of the data losers are known to close down within a 6-month period.

A Disaster Recovery Plan

A disaster recovery plan should not just take into account the worst case scenarios; it should also have workable alternatives for moderate business impediments too. A proper plan should at least anticipate five problems to business continuity and work out suitable measures to tackle expected eventualities.

Moreover, a DRP does not just pertain to the IT department, as is commonly believed. A proper plan takes into account the employees, process, the technology and the location.

Of these four, technology plays an important role, for technological problems result in a data loss. It is important that all the generated data is backed up in a remote backup server. Sensitive documents should be micro-filmed, and finally creation of storage area networks (SAN) should be considered. SAN is attaching a remote computer data storage device to the servers in such a manner that the operating system recognises it as a locally attached device. Though usage of SAN is turning economical, it is only the big enterprises which avail this facility.

Secondly, upon formulation of a DRP, the employees must be sufficiently informed to make them aware of their role in an emergency. Chaotic employees fail the best laid plans.

Another vital aspect of the business is the location and business locations should be protected by surge protectors and fire protection measures. A backup site should also be selected to enable business relocation in times of emergency. These backup locations are classified into three ? cold, warm and hot. Of these the cold site is the most inexpensive; for it neither includes the requisite hardware nor backup versions of data from the original location. A warm site is one which contains the requisite hardware sans the backup copies of data. The most expensive of these is the hot site which contains the necessary infrastructure to resume normal business operations within hours of a disaster.

The type of location that has to be chosen should be pre-decided considering the entailed cost against the benefit. Formulating an all-comprehensive DRP is important and its nature varies according to the size and nature of the organisation. Some business enterprises, realising the vitality of a DRP, spend about 25% of their resources on it. However, it has also been noted that only half the businesses ever plan for a disaster and those who have planned have not checked the veracity of their planning. An untried plan is as good as no plan.